Two months later, on the Central Continent, within the Eternal Hall.
Rowan Mercer stood alone as the final governing principle of his inner world locked into place. For a moment, he simply stared. Then a rare, unguarded smile crossed his face.
"It's done."
The instant the words left his mouth, the world he had been shaping collapsed inward, compressing into a single point of light. Less than a minute passed before that point detonated outward in silence, unfolding into something vast and whole.
A complete universe.
It was still young. Compared to the mature single-universe realms of Marvel, or even the Central Continent itself, it was small. Fragile, perhaps. But it was real. A closed, self-sustaining cosmos. Given time, more stars, more life, more expansion, it could one day rival any world in existence.
The moment its creation stabilized, Rowan felt it ripple back into him.
His body changed first. Then his soul.
The shift was fundamental, not an increase in strength so much as a rewrite of what strength meant. His spirit became denser, more resilient. His physical form followed, reinforced from the inside out. This was not training paying off. This was a leap in the nature of his existence.
Because his inner world had crossed the threshold into a complete universe, Rowan himself was dragged across with it.
He had already been standing at the edge of that boundary. This merely pushed him over.
Energy surged through him, deeper and heavier than anything he had carried before. His flesh, his will, his consciousness all sharpened again. In this moment, both the world he carried and the self who carried it reached the same tier.
Rowan Mercer was now, by definition, a singular-universe entity.
He was new to it. So was his universe. But even at this early stage, the overlap between the two meant he could already stand shoulder to shoulder with creators who had lingered at this level for countless ages.
Not the peak. Not beings who had already brushed against multiversal authority. Someone like Ilúvatar still stood far above him.
But if Rowan chose to flee, escape was no longer impossible.
If he were desperate enough, if he gathered the souls of every avatar into one vessel and layered every system of power he had learned across worlds, there was even a slim chance he could turn the tables against a stronger creator.
Slim. Dangerous. But no longer unthinkable.
"You really are frightening," Ilúvatar said, watching from nearby, awe plain on his face. "At this rate, you might catch up to me sooner than I ever expected."
For a being born from chaos itself, Ilúvatar had spent ages climbing to his current height. Rowan had done it in a fraction of that time.
Rowan shook his head with a quiet laugh. "It won't be that easy from here."
Reaching the peak of a singular universe would take time. Crossing into the multiversal realm would take something closer to a miracle. The difficulty gap between those two stages made the journey from mortal to creator look trivial by comparison.
Unless…
Unless he did what he had been considering all along.
Fusion.
Every avatar he possessed had reached the same level at the same moment as his main body. Two of them merging would be enough to force a multiversal breakthrough.
It would be a weak one. Barely holding together. Their universes were still small, still growing.
But if he waited, if every version of himself refined their worlds to the absolute limit before merging, then even a partial fusion would produce a formidable multiversal entity.
If all of them combined…
Rowan's thoughts slowed.
That required one thing first.
Leaving their native universes.
Which meant dealing with the creators who ruled them.
"Looks like it's time to start knocking on doors," Rowan muttered.
Marvel could wait. The gap between him and its supreme creator was still too wide. A failed conversation there would mean death, and there was no shortage of power left for him to harvest in that world anyway.
The Central Continent posed no issue. Ilúvatar was already an ally, and Rowan could leave whenever he wished, even taking others with him if he chose.
That left the remaining worlds.
Wizarding Britain. Fairy Tail. The Mage's Apprentice realm. The Arcane Nexus. The anomaly-filled modern world. The twin cities. The Holy Grail War. Tamriel.
From Ilúvatar's collection, Rowan had already studied records and stories of several of these realms, filling in the gaps where his knowledge had once been thin.
There was no need to rush all of them.
Some still had value left to extract.
Others were nearly exhausted.
"For now," Rowan decided, "the Mage's Apprentice world comes first."
In that world, deep within a bamboo forest, a panda basking lazily in the sun opened its eyes.
Its body twisted, reshaping itself into human form in a breath. Its consciousness expanded outward, sweeping across the entire planet.
Creators always left traces. Most built their sanctuaries somewhere along the river of time itself, where observing their worlds was easiest. The Eternal Hall was one such place.
Rowan could feel it now.
He smiled. "Found you."
The forest vanished.
When reality reassembled, Rowan stood within the flow of time itself. Before him rose a massive, ultra-modern estate, all sharp lines and impossible materials.
He scanned it.
Empty.
"That's new," Rowan said quietly.
He had expected eccentricity. Some creators favored ancient palaces, others preferred sleek modern structures. Rowan himself leaned toward the latter.
But absence was unexpected.
The creator was not in their sanctuary.
And more troubling still…
They were no longer in the world at all.